When I was a younger man, I used to frequent an Indian restaurant on lower Lexington Avenue in Manhattan called Curry in a Hurry. It wasn't far from my apartment. Upstairs, I'd sit over a heaping tray of russet chicken tikka, poori, nan and greasy samosas, and watch Bollywood musicals on the TV that was chained to the ceiling. What I liked most about Curry in a Hurry was a Bengali dessert called rasmalai—cheese curds in clotted cream flavored with cardamom—and a sign on the wall that read, "Eat Like a King, Pay Like a Pauper."

I first reviewed a totaldac, the d1-Dual DAC, in September of 2014 wherein I said, "...you end up with a presentation that sounds so natural, so life-like, it leads you directly to the music being played with very little reminder that you are in fact listening through a hi-fi." In 2016, I gathered up the funds to buy a totaldac d1-six. Here's what I said about that, "...I am meaningfully delighted, over and over again." As we all know seven is bigger than six, which leads me to believe the d1-seven...

The Empirical Audio Overdrive SX Ethernet DAC/Pre represents Steve Nugent's most current thinking on DAC design. Steve, chief designer and owner of Empirical Audio, has been building Empirical Audio DACs since 2009. His engineering background and experience in digital design have served him well having come up with many original creations and unique approaches in DAC design. The Overdrive SX builds on the basic design of his Overdrive SE, a DAC I reviewed for AudioStream back in 2014.

I reported on my positive impressions of the Prism Sound Callia DAC from RMAF and the the New York Audio Show which is unusual as I typically refrain from making comments on sound at shows. But the Callia intrigued me into it. If you look at the dates of those reports, you'll see it's taken some time to get a Callia here. It was worth the wait.

"It's her nose." Imagine reading a critical analysis of da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and said analysis of the painting's enduring popularity was pinned on her nose. Ridiculous right? (the answer is yes, that's ridiculous). Imagine reading a review of a DAC and the critical analysis pinned its performance on the D/A chip. That's equally ridiculous.

It's hard to believe that over three years has passed since I last reviewed a Wyred 4 Sound DAC. At that time, I found the DAC-2 DSDse to have "flawless function and performance that was a joy to experience." I now found myself very curious to see what E.J. Sarmento has come up with for today's computer audiophile. For those of you that aren't acquainted with E. J. Sarmento's California company, Wyred 4 Sound not only builds DACs, but offers power amps, preamps, integrated amps, music servers, along with cables and numerous accessories for the audiophile marketplace. The DAC-2v2 SE is Wyred 4 Sound's latest design that builds on their DAC-2v2 by adding many improvements to the basic design.

When I recently heard that exaSound Audio Design had released a new model replacement for their e22 DAC, I immediately contacted George Klissarov, President of exaSound Audio Design, to see if I could get a review sample of the new e32 DAC for an AudioStream review. I was very enthusiastic about the e32’s predecessor when I reviewed the e22 in 2014. At that time, I found the e22 to be an excellent sounding DAC and one that did a first-class job playing DSD files. The e22 was built around the ES9018S Sabre32 reference DAC chip and utilized exaSound’s custom ASIO drivers that allowed native DSD256 support for both OSX and Windows.

Skip The Bits
"Hey, you put DSD in my DAC! You put DAC in my DSD!" The buzz surrounding the T+A DAC 8 DSD is all about octuple-rate DSD; DSD512 (512 times that of CD)/22.5792 MHz. The idea being you use Signalyst's HQPlayer software to convert all of your music to DSD512 before sending it to the DAC 8 so that the latter's "True One Bit DSD Converter" can work its magic. Yea, magic.

Brooklyn
The new Mytek Brooklyn DAC does not sport a slicked back undercut, big beard, skinny jeans, a plaid shirt, and tattoos. Wrong neighborhood. What this Brooklyn sports is a preamplifier, a DSD256- and MQA-capable DAC, two headphone jacks which can be paired with a 4 pin XLR to 2 1/4 inch jacks for balanced headphones, a freakin' phono input (MM/MC), and a sculpted aluminum front panel in black (for a touch of Brooklyn) or "frosty silver".

Andreas Koch, Founder, CEO, and Engineer along with Bert Gerlach, Engineer have recently released the new Playback Designs Sonoma Series that includes the Syrah Server, Merlot DAC, and OpBox conversion kit for the Oppo103 Blu-ray Disc Player. Another component in the Sonoma series is also slated for release called the Pinot that is an Analog Digital Convertor. I’m sure a number of you have noticed that the Sonoma Series has named the products after fine wines. Andreas previously worked for Sony developing the first native DSD recorder and workstation. Sony’s chairman at that time felt that DSD’s potential and performance was similar to a good wine; hence the name Sonoma for the workstation.
Andreas’ view of musical experiences and fine wine:

Trickle Down
John Atkinson praised the dCS Vivaldi stack (114,496) in his Measurements section of Michael Fremer's review; "Without any doubt, this was the best digital playback I have experienced." and "When I measured the company's earlier four-box system, the Scarlatti, in 2009, I concluded that it offered 'state-of-the-art measured performance.' The Vivaldi improves on the Scarlatti's performance in almost every way. Wow!" The dCS Rossini DAC inherits a number of things from the Vivaldi including the dCS Digital Processing Platform.